What was Sondos thinking as she hugged her three children inside their tent and set it on fire? Didn't the tears of her children move something in her heart? Didn't the cries of her infant, who was only a month old, push her back? Yes, it is true that they hadn't eaten for three days. Yes, they didn't have enough heating to cope with the bitter cold. Two girls died two days ago from the cold, joining about twenty other refugees who have lost their lives this year for the same reason, in addition to the lack of health care. It is also true that Sondos' husband and relatives were not with her. She was twenty-eight years old, living in an overcrowded refugee camp.

What on earth was she thinking? Did she think they were all going to die anyway, so why prolong the agony? Or maybe she thought that God is more merciful than the United Nations, the Syrian government, the Russians, the Americans, the Iranians, and the Jordanians who surrounded that miserable camp in southern Syria with their armies and military bases? Some thought must have crossed her mind, that feeling that sticks to you like an electric drill in your brain, turning your life into a black hell. Did she say to herself: "If I lose my dignity and honor, life has no meaning"?

Maybe she was crazy. But how much sanity is possible in a region drowning in a sea of blood? What does it take for a human being to remain sane in the midst of this madness? Why do we blame her and not the UN agencies that are supposed to provide refugees with food, fuel, shelter and health care? Why not the Syrian government forces that surrounded the camp and caused food and fuel prices to rise four times higher than in the rest of Syria? Why not the US military, willing to spend trillions of dollars on wars but turning a blind eye when it comes to human lives?

What does it take for us - as humans - to realize that we all bear part of the responsibility for this disaster? Have we not all committed moral suicide by letting Sondos Fathallah and her children reach this level of despair? At least Sondos decided to kill her body to preserve her soul, but we killed both her body and our souls. In this sense, everyone who stood by and watched her suffering is an accomplice to the crime, and possibly an instigator - and they deserve to be convicted.

Just last weekend, thousands of Syrian refugees were stranded in the mountains of Lebanon in the midst of a brutal snowstorm. Roads were blocked by snow, and their tents and huts were covered in a white shroud, as if they were waiting for someone to read the prayer for the dead. In the Deir Ballut camp near the Afrin River in northern Syria, we witnessed another tragedy. Due to melting snow and heavy rains, the river level rose and parts of the camp were flooded. The water was so strong that it washed away people and destroyed their shelter. An elderly man and a child were killed.

Why doesn't anyone end this suffering that has gone on for so long? Fifteen million people are refugees and displaced, and more than half a million people have been killed. Everything has been destroyed and razed to the ground. What more should the Syrian people have to pay for their freedom? Please don't send aid, even though it is desperately needed - just stop the war. Let people go to a safe place, rebuild their homes, raise their children, and live a decent life.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides some assistance to Syrians. Ironically, many of these displaced people are originally Palestinian refugees, for whom UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) is responsible. There are ten Palestinian refugee camps in Syria under the auspices of UNRWA, but none of these agencies can repatriate the refugees.

In my experience as a Palestinian, being a refugee in the Middle East is not necessarily a temporary situation. My father left Palestine in 1948, when he was nine years old. I was born in Jordan with a refugee status, as were my children. More than seventy years have passed, and we are still waiting for the United Nations and the international community to bring us back to our homes. Today, there are no Palestinians in our original city of Bisan (Beit Shean) near Nazareth. It has been completely Judaized.

Since then, Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis have joined the Palestinians in their plight as refugees. Some have spent more than a decade in temporary shelters, while others have migrated to other continents and lost their culture and identity. Is there really a global conspiracy to destroy this region and end its people and culture? What does it all mean? Why is the world watching this mass annihilation without real intervention? Would it allow something like this to happen in Western Europe or America?

How many more like Sondos should burn themselves? How many more young men and women should drown in the Mediterranean in search of a safe life in Europe? How many more people should die on battlefields and under the rubble of their homes? The Syrian people are not a bunch of criminals and terrorists - they, like Sondos, just want to live with dignity, or die for justice.
Source: Middle East Monitor